ABSTRACT
Remote work has become widely accepted after COVID-19 but comes with many complaints. This paper considers the lack of informal communication among colleagues in remote and hybrid settings. Former studies have acknowledged the value of informal communication in daily work, so we intend to improve the well-being of employees by supporting and stimulating it in remote settings. This exploratory study aimed to understand the situation from a design perspective, and we adopted the research-through-design approach and created designs derived from the design-for-awareness strategy. The study was conducted using online interviews and comprised two sessions: sensitization to immerse participants in the context and exploration for in-depth feedback on new design concepts. Five themes result from the open coding analysis of the interview data. The results provide insights into next steps of design implications for special aspects of remote work, challenges in information sharing, and the role of social factors. © 2022 Owner/Author.
ABSTRACT
Anticipating the post-Covid-19 period, the need for innovation remains urgent, with the innovative work behaviour (IWB) exhibited by employees being a crucial aspect. Since Scott and Bruce (1994) wrote about this behaviour, many IWB-related factors have been found. In this study, we distinguished various employees' personal innovation properties as IWB-related factors: creativity, psychological empowerment, optimism and work-contextual factors like room for autonomy, leadership, multidisciplinary innovative teamwork and external contacts. In our qualitative research within two innovative Dutch companies (Philips and Topicus), we interviewed 49 employees, most with a high degree of IWB, and their 22 managers to uncover the relation between the factors and IWB. Earlier research provided rich information about IWB and its factors, mostly from an organizational viewpoint. Our research focuses on the employees themselves, who are showing IWB. We assumed at the start of our research that in addition to these factors, there must be an overall energetic stimulus, because innovation is a process with many obstacles. Therefore, we introduce the concept of innovation energy, which converts employees' innovation properties into innovative work behaviour. This outcome can be used in further research and in the managerial and HRM practice.